Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Design Your Own Blend?

'The genius of some ideas stems simply from the obvious nature of them.

I got an email from the folks at The Roasterieto inform me of their new program called my Blend, a process that allows you to create your own coffee blend. The way it works is that you answer a series of specific questions that helps you identify your favorite flavors in a cup of coffee, to which they can create a blend to match.

Granted you have to buy a minimum of 48 oz. of said blend, but when you think about it, they're roasting a whole batch to your specifications.

Honestly, I'm curious to see how well this works. If you've made your own blend, please either comment below or shoot me an email.

8 comments:

I have not tried to "design my own blend" and I'm not so sure it would be good. I have been tasting what I believe to be single source coffees. I really enjoy Tres Rios and Terrazu from Costa Rica. Today I sampled Sumatra from a local Arkansas coffee shop. It seemed rather flat. Maybe the blend would be better!

Almost all the coffees you buy in a grocery store are a blend. The unblended coffees tend to have a bite which means bitterness. Or they have the wrong blends. But most coffee companies are very good at blending their coffees to give them a richer taste while keeping them smooth. The blend removes the aftertatse and sharpness too.The key is not what you blend but the ratios of each

Kenneth Davids of www.coffeereview.com went looking for "top value single origin coffees." He found one in a Safeway store that was 100% Colombian. It is "Eight O'Clock Coffee, the venerable coffee brand that for ninety years has carried the lonely torch for a cheap, whole-bean, all-Arabica alternative to roast-and-ground canned blends, also provided us with a 100% Colombia, which turned out to be one of the stars of our cupping, a clean, crisply lush, almost luminously classic coffee." He went on to say, "The $7.99 per pound Eight O'Clock Colombia sample was perhaps the most impressive in terms of dollars to distinction, though I have some trepidation assigning high ratings to coffees produced with the kind of volume to which Eight O'Clock is committed."

Unless you really know coffee, or they help with advice, this could be really hard. I just found out my new favorite blend; Mocha Java from silverjoes.com, has a mix of beans including sumatra and ethopia. But they would not give what the percentage of each. So my point is, even after deciding which beans, its the percentages that make all the difference.

Oh, btw, cbulice; where in AR is your coffee shop?? I live in NWA and we have some good ones up here.

I have to admit that even as someone who vastly prefers single origins, this is an interesting concept. I've known several people to experiment with making their own blends, but the idea of listing the notes your would like to detect and letting someone else engineer it for you, well that's fascinating.

I have actually talked to a friend who ordered a My Blend. She said that though it doesn't mention the percentages of the components that there is obviously a very complex web of combinations possible.

She also said that she couldn't believe how accurate it was. She is a huge coffee fan too...she knows way more than I.

Anyway, I plan on ordering my own My Blend and will send it as a gift to my Mom & Dad. I plan on uploading a picture of my wife and I. William and Stacy's Blend!